I'd Walk a Mile for a Baguette

Montparnasse's Le Dôme has a branch at
Bastille.

Your Ducks are In Danger, Louis!

Paris:- Sunday, 11. July 1999:- You may be ready
to do this, but Madame, Le Parisien's housewife, is
grumbling about it. Here it is traditional vacation time in
France and the butcher, the baker and the shops downstairs
are taking advantage of it.

In Paris, Madame says she can get everything, but it is
a little further away. If all of the local shops are
closed, she wants to know why they can't post the addresses
of their summer substitutes, like pharmacies do for their
weekly closing days.

Apparently Monsieur is grumbling too. While Madame is
trudging 'all over town' to get daily necessities, her
substitute 'finds' do not match the quality found in the
closed shop downstairs. In some extreme cases, Madame is
even forced to resort to supermarkets, which are mostly
open all year-round.

This story is in Le Parisien and it is a real cook-up
job. The fact is, very few
Parisians live above their favorite shops and many
routinely shop at supermarkets. Not everybody lives next to
a street-marché either - so the walking to shop is
reality and normal.

Not all of the theatres in the
Rue de Gaité are named 'Montparnasse.'

Out in the country, it can be a real problem when the
village's only baker takes off for a month of play and
frivolity - but in Paris, substitutes for favorite shops
are seldom far away. Monsieur could help out a bit too
instead of watching summer re-runs - re-runs of last
summer's re-runs that is - on TV.

The plus side of shopping in summer, is mostly about the
fact that Madame and Monsieur are themselves away on
holidays - thus shortening the lines of the cash counters,
no matter where they are.

The Angst of the Back-seat
Driver

About a third of French lady front-seat car passengers
have fear often or quite often, according to a recent study
done for the 'Securité Routière'
organization. When hubby is driving, Madame is not
tranquil.

Lady passengers, 'who are on the edge of a nervous
breakdown,' do not necessarily tell their driving husbands.
But 29 percent do, while 32 percent only rarely, and 12
percent never do.

'Making the situation worse' is one reason not to bring
it up while the car is in motion.
'Bothering the driver' is another reason for not doing it.
But apparently resignation is wrong because in two cases
out of three, the driver will take a warning
seriously.

The daring young man on the green
motorcycle helps to keep Paris sidewalks clean.

The study was done to find out how to get drivers to act
a bit more responsibly. Getting the messages of angst from
passengers through to drivers might work, psychologists
think; but to expect a lot of wisdom from younger ladies
who might appreciate speed just as much as the next guy, is
too much.

Another expert thinks the average passenger might not be
the best source of a co-pilot. Moms fear the risks of
driving too and may not want to relieve dad for parts of
long hauls; thus setting off a long silence while pop
sweats it out behind the wheel, driving to the edge of his
competence.

The Prosecutor Hates Jokes

You may remember the story around
Halloween time last year about the flying virgins and the
waltzing candles at Saint-Hubert church in the village of
Delain. After an exorcist was called in by the Archbishop,
the cops finally got the mayor to confess to the
hanky-panky.

On Thursday the trial judge decided not to follow the
prosecutor's demand for four months' suspended sentence and
loss of civil rights and the right to vote, and settled on
a sentence of 150 hours of community service.

The state prosecutor had also demanded a penalty
'inversely proportional to the impact of the media' on the
story. As a 'media person' I do not know if this means I
will be partly responsible for the ex-mayor getting
community service or not getting a harder time.

According to his lawyer, the ex-mayor 'confesses every
day.' An exorcist has been mopping up too. Apparently, it
was the ex-mayor's intention to have nothing more than a
little - and local - joke on the village's 200
inhabitants.

But he had not reckoned on the 'vampire' press, ever
watchful for good 'miracle' stories. 'We' forced him into elaborating the joke, to amuse the world,
is how it goes. I'll admit the press can be a bit seedy at
times; but it's just plain bad taste and greed - not
outright malice.

It is not our concern that 'France was made to look
ridiculous' or that the 'law and justice were mocked.' This
is what the prosecutor imagines.

To the prosecutor these opinions are a serious offenses,
even if they can't be proven to be facts. Therefore
additional charges of theft, insults to public officials
and destruction of public property are still being
considered.

It seems as if our hapless ex-mayor, 32, didn't realize
there are some people in France who think joking is
illegal. This in itself is a joke and the authorities seem
determined to prove they don't get it.

Madame, La
Zingueuse

The Prime Minister's office has run up a flag proposing
to change the gender of some French words to suit the
gender of the person to whom the word is attached. This
comes after a lady cabinet minister objected to being
officially known as 'Le Ministre.'

Just to prove that the French language is not stuffy or
indifferent to changing winds, the Prime Minister's
proposal includes changing 'un docteur' to 'une docteure,'
'un pizzaïol' to 'une pizzaïola,' 'un rabbin' to
'une rabbine' and 'un zingueur' to 'une zingueuse.'

This is fine with me, and will be helpful when I call
government ministers on the phone. If I need a zinc roof
fixed I may as well call in une zingueuse as un zingueur,
but I'm not quite sure what I will get when addressing une
pizzaïola. My antique 'Nouveau' Petit Larousse -
apparently masculine - just says 'pizza' and lets it go at
that.

France Télécom's Revenge

For some time all sorts of XYZ characters have been
peddling 'magic' phone cards for making low-priced calls.
I've wondered how they can offer these sweet deals, while
using national monopoly operator France
Télécom's lines.

The answer comes when the Authorité de
Régulation des Télécommunications -
'ART' for short - decides to let good old FT whack a
25-centime per minute tax on
top of what it charges independent operators - who have
been buying the interconnection service at wholesale
prices, passing on the savings, and thereby undercutting
FT's retail rates for its own phone cards.

The independents are howling because now their rates
will be close to FT's; which charges a franc a minute for
its standard phone card of 50 minutes. France
Télécom says it is obliged to maintain the
public telephone cabins - where all cards are accepted -
and this is why it wants the money.

One of the
theatres in the Rue de Gaité is named 'La
Comédie Italienne.'

Wail they may, but the independent operators have had a
year to wait for the ART's decision and now have another
five months in which to continue cleaning up like the
'Minitel Millionaires' they were dreaming of becoming. When
the time is up, we will all pay the full load.

'Big
Lard" Takes a Fall

In the suburb known as the Cité Balzac, residents
didn't call Miloud delicate names. 'Meatball' or 'Big Lard'
were two that are printable. Miloud is not very tall, but
pushes the needle up to a cool 105 kilos on the scales.

This didn't stop him from wearing men's-sized
high-heeled shoes while robbing banks. To make the costume
complete, the over-size short bandit often wore a wig,
falsies, a dress and slick pumps. He also took the trouble
to apply tinted cream to hide unusual skin blotches, in
order to look good on the banks' video-security
cameras.

Since October of last year, he's starred in about 20
videos and managed to collect 1.7 million francs, armed
with waterpistols. In this he was following in the steps of
an uncle well-known to the police. After holdups he was
said to distribute part of the loot in the streets of
Balzac - sort of like "Robin Hood - Fat Man in Tights."

By pure bad luck, at a bank in Oziers-la
Ferrière, 'Big Lard' got a spot on his nice dress.
The spot was made by a nasty cash drawer full of indelible
ink. Forced to flee in high heels, he took a car driver
hostage, who has yet to recover his sang-froid after the
strange encounter.

After the bungled job, Milous put away the soiled item
and went back to his more traditional moustache and wig
disguise, leaving only the videos already in police cinemas
to testify to his skill at impersonating fat lady
bankrobbers.

Today he is far from his under-weight 40-kilo girlfriend
- sitting behind Swedish curtain rods with six of his gang.
On jobs, he used a rotating team of three of them, so as to
pass unnoticed. Supposing one can do so, when disguised as
a yellow, 105-kilo canary in high-heeled sneakers. The
account in Le Parisien didn't say who snitched on 'Big
Lard.'

Your Ducks are In Danger, Louis!

While housewives in Paris are apparently worried about
where their next baguette is coming from, four teenagers in
Versailles decided to 'hunt for the pot.' What better place
than on the old Bourbon property, known locally as the
Château de Versailles?

When nabbed by chance by local gendarmes, the quartet of
poachers were found to have two rifles and a knife, but no
booty; despite having firing several rounds at local ducks
without waking up the chateau's security service.

This service combs the park and the chateau just before
closing time each day, looking for tourists who may have
the intention of staying the night without an
invitation.

How the poachers got in, is unknown. This was a first
case of this type for the Versailles police.

France -
Now the Score

We were counted by the census and the score is
60,082,000 inhabitants in France. This number includes
those residing in Corsica, Guadeloupe, Guyana,
Martiniqué and Reunion; the Reunion which has
107,000 and I don't know where it is.

Since the last census in 1990 France has gained two
million residents, but Paris has lost 36,200 inhabitants.
These might not have gone far because the Ile-de-France
population rose by a third of a point to 10,960,600 - which
is about a million short of the number I usually quote.

The inner suburbs gained slightly, while the greater
part of the Ile-de-France area gained almost 270,000. The
inner Hauts-de-Seine department picked up 31,600 new
residents and alone almost accounts for Paris' loss, except
that those leaving Paris might have chosen the less
expensive departments to the north-east and south-east.

Or Parisians move even further away - to Lille in the
north, to Rennes in Brittany, Orléans, Nantes,
Angers, Stasbourg in Alsace, Lyon, Toulouse, Aix or way
down-south to Montpellier.

Of these, the top increase was scored by Nantes, which
jumped 9.67 percent. The big Lyon suburb of Villeurbanne
had the smallest of the 'big' increases with a growth of
4.38 percent; all the others were between this and the
number for Nantes.

Generally, the population increases were in the
Ile-de-France and west along the Seine valley to the coast.
The whole west coast of France below Brittany showed
substantial increases, especially around Nantes and Bordeaux. All the departments bordering
the Mediterranean also had big increases; extending up into
the Alps areas. Finally, the eastern area of Alsace showed
a substantial general increase too.

With the extra 2
million people, you'd think some of them would be eating
waffles.

Losers in the population contest were departments in the
very geographical centre of France, joined to an area
running down behind the Atlantic coast winners, all the way
to the Pyrenees.

Montmartre in Paris is supposed to have 'lost' 2000
residents and its mayor, Daniel Vaillant who is also
deputy-mayor of Paris, is not happy about it.

In addition to his subjective estimate of the numbers of
squatters and transient students, he has a real list of
2000 little kids waiting for places in pre-kindergartens,
and 6-7000 on a list waiting for public housing in the 18th
arrondissement, which includes Montmartre.

As in every census, the numbers are not everybody's
tax-collector's dream.

Paris - Now the Movie

Last week's contents page featured a photo of a Morris
column with an ad for the movie 'Le Voyage à Paris.'
Le Parisien's movie critic gives this film a rave of four
stars, which is a very good score indeed for a first film
by Marc-Henri Dufresne.

Daniel, played by Olivier Broche, is an employee of a
toll-booth on the autoroute when he inherits his father's
collection of souvenir Tour Eiffels.

He's always dreamed of 'rising' to Paris - it's near the
top on most maps of France - and the day he finally
decides, launches an adventure sowed with ambushes. The
movie is about almost getting to Paris. As with all good
comic movies by Tati, this one is also short: a full 85
minutes long. Remember: four stars!